Rajmohan’s Wife (B K Classics)

Description

Marking Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s debut as a writer, Rajmohan’s Wife is the first published novel in English by an Indian. The novel was serialized in 1864 in a short-lived magazine published from Calcutta, but it did not appear as a book in the author’s lifetime. The book soon went into oblivion. A neglected but an interesting book, its plots and characters symbolically map the birth of modern India as well as the modern Indian woman through political, cultural and social contexts. It depicts the story of the trials and tribulations of the beautiful and heroic Mantangini, the female protagonist, as she selflessly rebels against her cruel and brutish husband, Rajmohan, to save her lover. Caught between the forces of temptation, transgression and the conventional image of the obedient and chaste Indian wife, Mantangini embodies the hopes of an emerging India that was struggling for selfhood and dignity. In the 1930s, all but the first three chapters of the text were rediscovered. The missing chapters were retranslated into English from a Bengali version which Bankim Chandra Chatterjee himself had started writing, and the reconstructed whole was then published. The present edition reprints the 1940 version and is once more made available to the reader. Famously known as being the writer of Vande Mataram, the national song of India, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was the first to break the dry monotony of Bengali prose and bring in a touch of informality and intimacy. The latter part of his career brought out best sellers like Kapalakundala and Krishnakanta’s Will. He remains to be one of India’s most celebrated writers.